Column One/JPost..
11 February '16..
This week Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told government ministers that he may wait for the next US president before signing a new military assistance deal with America. Israel’s current military assistance package is set to expire in 2018 and the new package is supposed to include supplemental aid to compensate Israel for President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. But to date, the administration has rejected Israel’s requests for additional systems it could use to defend against Iran attacks.
Last October, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon asked US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to provide Israel with a new squadron of F-15s that Israel would outfit with its own electronics systems. Carter reportedly rejected that request as well as one for bunker buster bombs.
Carter instead insisted that Israel use the supplemental aid to purchase more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, US-made missile defense systems, and the Osprey V-22 helicopter, which Ya’alon didn’t want.
The fact that the administration wants Israel to buy more F-35s instead of F-15s is alarming both for what it tells us about America’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge against Iran and for what it tells us about the F-35, which is set to become the IAF’s next generation combat fighter.
Before considering these issues, it is worth pointing out that the US is not the ally it once was.
This week Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies published a report warning that the West’s decades-long military technological superiority over Russia, China and other countries is eroding. The erosion of the West’s military technological advantage over the likes of China and Russia is deeply problematic for Israel. Given the IAF’s complete dependence on US defensive and offensive systems, absent other factors, Israel is imperiled simply by keeping its eggs in America’s basket.
But there are other factors that make continued dependence on the US problematic in the extreme. The erosion of the US’s military technological superiority is matched by its growing weakness internationally. This weakness is most glaring today in Syria.
Last November, Russia deployed an S-400 anti-aircraft system in Latakia. The system is capable of downing jets from a distance of 400 km. Half of Israel, including Ben-Gurion Airport, is within its range. Last December, a member of the IDF General Staff ruminated that never in their worst nightmares did Israeli military planners imagine that the S-400 would be deployed so close to us.
The S-400 ended Israel’s regional air superiority.
It also ended US air superiority.
In late December, Bloomberg reported that right after the Russians deployed the S-400, they began targeting with radar US planes providing air support to rebel forces in Syria.
US officials called Russia’s actions “a direct and dangerous provocation.”
Rather than respond forcefully to Russia’s aggressive move, the US ended all manned flights in the area. It stopped providing air support to rebel forces. There is a direct connection between the US’s docile acceptance of its loss of air superiority in December and the brutal Russian supported assault on Aleppo today.
This week, ambassador Dennis Ross and New York Times military correspondent David Sanger, who are both generally supportive of the Obama administration, published articles excoriating Obama’s policies in Syria.
Ross and Sanger both wrote that Obama was critically mistaken when he said that Russia’s deployment to Syria would not have any significant impact on the region, and that Russia would rue the day it decided to get directly involved.
Sanger noted that the administration’s constant refrain that “there is no military solution” to the war in Syria was wrong.
There is a military solution, it’s “just not our military solution,” a senior US security official admitted to Sanger. It’s Russian President Vladimir Putin’s solution.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Ross explained that in deploying his forces to Syria, “Putin aims to demonstrate that Russia, and not America, is the main power broker in the region and increasingly elsewhere.”
In other words, Putin’s involvement in Syria is simply a means to achieve his larger goal of replacing the US as the leading superpower.
This turn of events is dangerous for Israel, not least because the first parties Russia turned to in its anti-American gambit are Israel’s worst enemies – Iran and Hezbollah, along with the Assad regime. By acting in concert, and limiting their operations – as the Iranians have done as well in Iraq – to attacking forces backed by the US, while leaving Islamic State unharmed, the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad make clear that their alliance is first and foremost geared toward reducing US power in the region.
Rather than act on this direct challenge to the US, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry continue to talk emptily about peace conferences and cease-fires. In so doing their further destroy US credibility as an ally. As America’s primary ally and client in the region, Israel is imperiled by this behavior because it serves to hollow out its capacity to deter its enemies from attacking.
This then brings us to the F-35s and to the IAF’s procurement policies more generally.
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